For several decades, political and social commentators have noticed a phenomenon, colloquially known as the “Big Sort,” in which individuals and families have reorganized themselves into local communities along political, cultural, and religious lines. This idea first came to prominence with Bill Bishop’s 2008 book, The Big Sort. Since the convulsions of 2020, and especially since the widespread adoption of remote work, this sorting has intensified.

Modern life is structurally atomizing and alienating. Most Americans live in suburbs where they have no connection to the place or its people. They pull into their cul-de-sacs, park in their driveways, close their doors, and never once interact with any of their neighbors. Even if someone attempts to be neighborly, everyone else will not reciprocate and will treat that person as an oddball. A person can live several years in a place and not learn a single thing about his neighbors, except by seeing the “In this house we believe…” signs in their yards. This is something I have written about at length in my book The Boniface Option. The genuine communities that our grandparents and great-grandparents once took for granted — where people shared a way of life, cultural attitudes, and ownership of a particular place — have become exceedingly rare. It’s no wonder that many feel like random individuals among millions, numbers on a spreadsheet of economic data, and mercenaries with no connection to anything larger than themselves.

People want to be part of communities where they share core values with their neighbors, including the same religious beliefs and similar views on politics and the common good. The desire to move to such a place is fundamentally American. In fact, America originated from groups who did precisely this. My own hometown in rural southern Minnesota was settled by Germans and Scandinavians (including my great-great-grandfather) in the 1870s and 1880s. They built a community where they could create a shared way of life.

Postwar urbanization and suburbanization, exacerbated by globalism, have ransacked genuine communities. Even cities, often detested by those on the right, once boasted neighborhoods where residents felt a deep connection and sense of ownership. In the intervening decades, this sense of connection has been uprooted. People might have been born and raised in a particular place, but few feel the same deep connection that was common before the mid-twentieth century. Despite this, there remains a strong yearning for a place where people and their children can truly be from.

This article is taken from The American Spectator’s fall 2024 print magazine. Subscribe to receive the entire magazine.

The contemporary political situation in the United States intensifies these impulses. It is widely recognized on the right that the Left has direct or indirect control over nearly every institution in public life, including mass media, entertainment, academia, major corporations, and, of course, most of our law-making institutions, particularly those in blue states and cities. In 2022, my own state of Minnesota, which had long been moderately liberal and subject to the high taxation and burdensome regulation common to twentieth-century liberalism, fell to radical leftism after the election of Barack Obama. The very first agenda that Minnesota Democrats pursued after gaining control of both houses in our state legislature — by a single seat — was to eliminate all regulations on abortion, including legalizing abortion up to the moment of birth. They then immediately passed a so-called transgender rights bill, which allows children who have been groomed into transgenderism to be removed from the custody of their parents who oppose this, thus enabling chemical castration and genital mutilation. 

Art by Bill Wilson

Living in a place where there is even a remote possibility that my children could be stolen from me and butchered is totally untenable. This is why we have decided to move to Tennessee, a state where laws have been strengthened to protect children from leftist degeneracy. This is not a decision we make lightly, nor are we fleeing as refugees to simply survive. Instead, we aim to devote our lives to building a community where people like us can thrive and be rooted for generations. We do not seek to further contribute to the fragmentation of our entire society. Rather, we are leaving to put down deep roots.

We are not undertaking this move alone. It is part of a larger project by the company RidgeRunner to foster the creation of new communities. Living in a place where we can share the same deeply held beliefs with our neighbors will be a dream come true. However, achieving what our recent ancestors had will require significant sacrifice. Despite this challenge, the sheer number of people also willing to make this sacrifice is a source of endless encouragement.

Regardless of the outcome in November’s election, this sorting will continue. But if Kamala Harris wins, and the destructive forces of leftism are even more ascendant, the need to live among those like yourself will become imperative. It will be crucial to establish real-life communities where local political and cultural power can be organized to resist those who seek to destroy us. 

An American Right composed of random, deracinated individuals spread out across a sea of hundreds of millions, while our adversaries remain highly coordinated, financed, and organized, is a surefire way to lose the country. To effectively wage political battles, we must resettle in places where we can build strength in numbers. As an individual, your impact is limited, but entire towns or cities of your friends and allies can accomplish exponentially more. In our strongholds, we can rebuild the institutions our enemy controls. We can have schools, colleges, businesses, churches, and local governments that will defend us from what is to come. If we fail to pursue this strategy, we will remain scattered, like sheep without a shepherd. The wolves are coming, and they are hungry.

More than anything else, as political and cultural decline is readily apparent all around us, building real, tangible, and durable communities will give hope to millions. We are the descendants of those who left intolerable political, economic, cultural, and religious environments and took on massive risks to make something new in raw, dangerous, and uncharted wilderness. To take the greatest of risks to build new cities is in our blood. Such feats have been achieved before through immense struggle and suffering. This is why a place called “America” exists today. And if we want a place like America to endure, we must do it again.

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